They worked nearly three triple-digit days before it felt unsafe to go on.

Maria Paredes said she already had a headache while working in a tomato field near Dixon on June 5, when high temperatures hit between 99 to 107 degrees. The hotter the next day got, the 40-year-old farmworker said, “the more it started to go back to my head, and I started to feel like vomiting.”

Three years ago, a string of Facebook posts spelled doom for a Kern County plan to curb COVID-19’s path through vulnerable communities.

The virus had already wreaked havoc in the conservative, agricultural county by October 2020, when the Kern County Public Health Department struck what would be a nearly $1.5 million deal with local organizations and an associated small business to get crucial information about COVID-19 to hard-hit ZIP codes and vulnerable groups.

Many farmworkers in Coachella Valley lack legal status as citizens and don’t qualify for most federal and state disaster aid. Even a new $95 million storm assistance program for immigrants that Governor Gavin Newsom recently touted is out of reach because it pertains to the winter and spring storms and floods.